1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an integrated circuit and a method of fabricating the same, and more particularly, to a semiconductor device and a method of fabricating the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Memory, so to speak, is a semiconductor device for storing data or information. Among various memory products, a non-volatile memory is characterized by storing, reading, or erasing data repeatedly without loss of data after termination of power supply. Hence, the non-volatile memory has become the semiconductor device extensively applied in personal computers or electronic equipment. In a variety of non-volatile memories, a flash memory possesses advantages of high-speed reading and writing capacity, high memory storage density, and so on. Therefore, the flash memory is applied to communication industry, consumer electronics industry, data processing industry, transportation industry, and so forth.
The flash memory device typically has a stacked gate structure. To comply with requirements for light-weight, slimness, and compactness, a way to reduce the dimension of the flash memory, to increase the memory storage density, and to lower down manufacturing costs has become one of the main research topics in current manufacturing technology. Nonetheless, an aspect ratio of gaps among the stacked gate structures is increased after line width and the pitch are both shortened. Thereby, the gaps among the stacked gate structures cannot be completely filled with a dielectric layer, and pipes or seams are then formed therein. Despite a reflow process performed after formation of the dielectric layer, the temperature at which the reflow process is performed is required to be under certain degrees so as to prevent performance of devices from being affected by the excessively high temperature. As a result, subject to the temperature at which the reflow process is performed, the pipes or the seams can still not be completely filled with the dielectric layer during implementation of the reflow process. As such, the pipes or the seams are filled with metal deposited in a subsequent process of forming a contact window, thus resulting in short circuit between adjacent contact windows.